I've noticed a lot of vendors have been setting up their pages with video to make their sales pitch. I know that videos like that do have a bit higher conversion rate, as well as also giving extra backlink and promotion power from hosting it on a youtube account.

But I've been noticing more and more salespages are using a timer so that nothing but the video shows on the page until the video is over or close to over. At that time the "buy now" button, testimonials, and whatever else are finally displayed below the video frame.

I understand the point, you don't want the prospect to skip the presentation because if they go to the order page to soon, they may just decide it's too expensive or something and you lose the sale. But some of these "watch this short video" presentations are anything but short. I read about 10 times faster than the speed the text is being presented in the video. I've usually lost interest and am ready to leave the page (even if I am interested in the topic) long before the video is done.

My question is does that really increase conversions? There's an old sales adage that you shouldn't keep trying to make the sale after you've gotten a "yes". Once the customer is ready to buy you need to put an order form in front of them, if you just keep trying to make the sale it's like beating a dead horse and you're likely to turn some of those "yes"es into "nevermind"s.

Is it really better for a sales page to hold back the "order now" button until the prospect has watched a twenty minute video (of a text presentation they could have read themselves in a minute)?

I was actually wondering the same thing. These vids are like 25 minutes long and their is no buy now button in site...it prevent potential customers from buying the product because they may be convinced 10 minutes in the video and they don't feel like waiting another 15 or don't even know that they have to in order to see the buy now button.

I'm quite interested in this too. Hopefully someone who's actually done split testing sees this and can share their insights.

That said, what very often happens in this industry is one of the "gurus" doing (they can easily be just testing!) something and then thousands of wannabes copying the exact same strategy because "if this bloke is doing it then it must work!". There's a good chance that the same has happened with this approach.

Anyway - I'm not planning a launch at the moment but when I do the next one I will definitely split test between forced video, "friendly" video (fast forward etc. allowed) and a standard (text) sales page - all with the exact same content. Will be interesting to see the results!

I personally do not use videos on my sales pages. Whenever I get to a site with a video I find it very hard to pay attention to the sales pitch. I rather read a page and look at the highlights of the sales page before I make a decision.

I think that the initial impact of text outstrips video.
If the heading grabs me then I will click on the video to
learn more but am totally put off when a video autostarts
before I have had a chance to analyse the page.

Im no expert but I just remember reading on WF that video sales letters are like 50 to 100% better than regular sales letters. There is a recent thread on it.

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Yeah, I've heard that too. Although I imagine the 50-100% is an exageration. I don't doubt that a video presentation really does have a higher conversion rate. But that's not really my question.

What I'm wondering is if locking the visitor into watching the complete video before they have any other options on a page but to watch the video Especially if it's a long drawn out video, it seems like a lot of potential customers might just get frustrated and leave the page.

The one saving grace of this practice is that a lot of these sales pages prevent the visitor from leaving the page without getting a second sales pitch. If done right that could offset the conversion rate for the ones that get bored with the video too soon. But not all of these sales pages do that, many will just lose the potential customer if they don't stay to watch the complete video.

I'm not planning a launch at the moment but when I do the next one I will definitely split test between forced video, "friendly" video (fast forward etc. allowed) and a standard (text) sales page - all with the exact same content. Will be interesting to see the results!

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Yeah I'd like to see what kind of results you get from that test as well. My guess is that the 'friendly' video page will get the best conversions. But sometimes the real results are surprising on things like this.

I was actually wondering the same thing. These vids are like 25 minutes long and their is no buy now button in site...it prevent potential customers from buying the product because they may be convinced 10 minutes in the video and they don't feel like waiting another 15 or don't even know that they have to in order to see the buy now button.

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I've actually had my wife call me for dinner, gotten up and gone to the kitchen, served me up a plate of food, and then come back to find the video still playing and no other options available yet. lol.

The shopping habits Oxonbeef described are pretty much the same as mine about watching these videos. For something I'm actually interested just having the text in the video laid out on a page for me to read is much more effective. The only reason I ever watch these videos is when I'm looking for products to promote. If I was a potential buyer then about 100% of the time those forced video pages will lose me within about a minute or two at the most. I'm not the typical buyer that these products are targeting either though, so I'm not necessarily going to consider my feelings toward them an indication of their effectiveness.

I'd really like to know for sure though because I'd rather promote offers that have the highest converting sales page possible. I've been thinking the same thing as bryanon suggested, which is someone just saw it or heard its a good idea and then everyone started jumping on the bandwagon without knowing for sure. Or someone did some testing and determined it worked better, but most people trying to duplicate it are making the videos too long or are waiting to long to display the other links on the page. In other words it might be a good idea that most vendors are just implementing wrong. :cool2:

It would be really cool to hear from any vendors that are doing it, and why. :cool2:

I personally think it's a poor idea not showing the join button until the very end of the video on those hard sell, video only sales pages. If you make him wait, a percentage of surfers are going to get bored and click away. I've always made the most sales when I hustle as many hits to the join page as possible.

I've split tested all kinds of sales pages and my best converters are either regular sales pages or videos + summary text of the video and a big fat join link (opening in a new window so the surfer doesn't have to use the back button and restart the video). Really it depends on the niche and your own traffic; some buyers like to read and some like to watch videos, and the buyers are different in every niche. Also if your traffic is coming from say Youtube then they're obviously going to be more prone to watching videos rather than reading pages of text.

If you're sending "premature" clicks to the join page then your join page should really be continuing to sell your product (ie. contain a compelling summary of the product and the benefits + urgency), and if you open it in _blank then the video will continue to play and sell the surfer in the background.

I always host my vids on my own Flowplayer or JW Player rather than giving the surfer the opportunity to click off to Youtube and get distracted.

Definitely agree that a lot of tours are designed to emulate "gurus" rather than via rigorous split testing. Lately I have been using http://mouseflow.com/ extensively, which allows you to view recordings of how your surfers interact with your pages as well as different types of heatmaps. The only thing it's shown me is that there's no one size fits all and you have to test and tweak each tour to fit the niche and the traffic.

I wonder if this trend is due to people on the web becoming poorer readers? Literacy rates are dropping fast out there. Some areas of IM require the user be able to read. IE if you are selling money making schemes etc. However if you are selling porn then high level of reading is not always required. Anyway just a thought.

I wonder if this trend is due to people on the web becoming poorer readers? Literacy rates are dropping fast out there. Some areas of IM require the user be able to read. IE if you are selling money making schemes etc. However if you are selling porn then high level of reading is not always required. Anyway just a thought.

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I don't know if that's really the case or not. Even if it is though it only explains the expanding use of video sales pages. A lower literacy rate doesn't explain why it would be a good idea for a salespage to lock the visitor into watching the video without any option to check anything else out on the page or even place an order before the video completes.

I think the type of people your describing would actually have an even lower attention span to stick around for a forced sales pitch. I think they'd be the most likely to use the back button or just close the page.

I've split tested all kinds of sales pages and my best converters are either regular sales pages or videos + summary text of the video and a big fat join link (opening in a new window so the surfer doesn't have to use the back button and restart the video). Really it depends on the niche and your own traffic; some buyers like to read and some like to watch videos, and the buyers are different in every niche.

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See that what I would expect to be a good converter, the "videos + summary text of the video and a big fat join link". That's why it seems strange to me to force the visitor to watch 10 minute of the video before showing that "big fat order button".

It might make more sense to me if it was a good quality interview or commercial with live actors, but forcing the visitor to watch the scrolling text videos seems like it would be less effective. Having a scrolling text video seems like it would be more effective if the visitor had the option to switch over to read the text at his own speed, or at the very least give an "order button" sooner for the people that are sold on it partially through the video.

I think the type of people your describing would actually have an even lower attention span to stick around for a forced sales pitch. I think they'd be the most likely to use the back button or just close the page.

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This probably true I never really thought of it like that and you are right it doesnt actually go to the heart of the matter why lock people out from making the purchase decision before the video is finished. Seems pretty dumb to me.. I am with Autumn on this one punch them at your join page as fast as possible. In the old days we had as little information as possible on the join page. I actually find it hard to believe that these long clickbank style pages actually work. However this is once again an aside..

It's interesting, because if I was doing a sales page with NO written content, the delayed button worked better.

However, a long sales copy below the video with no delayed button did even better.

I believe the theory behind it is that you don't want to give the appearance of selling too quickly. You want the viewer to engage the video before even thinking about buying anything. That way, by the time you DO bring in the button, the viewer is already excited about the prospect of having the product.

To those who hate long copy, autostart video, timed calls to action, etc. I would just warn against using your own opinion as a gauge for how everyone would respond. For example, I hate autostart video. Can't stand it. But guess what? I use it in every single one of my sales pages right now. Why? Well, because regardless of how I feel about it, it far outperforms the alternative in every split test I conduct on it.

When it comes to how I market, I ignore my emotions, and I just go with what the numbers tell me, because at the end of the day, what I think doesn't matter. What works is all that matters.

This is a concept that many marketers find extremely difficult to grasp - they tend to view things from their own perspective, rather than that of their prospects. But it all comes down to the fact that we as marketers have seen perhaps 1000 (if not more) sales pages and know all "cheap" tricks in the book, whereas most of our customers have not and therefore react very differently.

But back to the topic - interesting split test results! For some reason I have never considered doing video + long copy underneath. It's always been either video or text. Will definitely give video + text a try next time around.

This is a concept that many marketers find extremely difficult to grasp - they tend to view things from their own perspective, rather than that of their prospects. But it all comes down to the fact that we as marketers have seen perhaps 1000 (if not more) sales pages and know all "cheap" tricks in the book, whereas most of our customers have not and therefore react very differently.

But back to the topic - interesting split test results! For some reason I have never considered doing video + long copy underneath. It's always been either video or text. Will definitely give video + text a try next time around.

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To be fair, I market Clickbank offers almost exclusively. Check out their marketplace for examples of that. There are a few on page 1.

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